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[PA Comic] Friday, April 18, 2014 - The Dungeon Mistress, Part Five
Dog
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Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
[PA Comic] Friday, April 18, 2014 - The Dungeon Mistress, Part Five
The Dungeon Mistress, Part Five
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2014/04/18
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G: 3
A: There actually doesn't seem to be much of anything around.
Fin
Or we'd roll and get the base info no matter what, but the roll determined whether you knew something specific, like location, or that there was a dragon in it.
Clearly, it's because we too must learn the origins of The Bat.
It looks to me like that's what Ann did. I don't think Galahad actually rolled, she just asked Galahad knowing he had a high WIS and he had to look down at his character sheet to remember what it was.
She did say WIS check, but I think in this case it's just a hand-wave because she knows his WIS is high. There's no indication he rolled and he answers basically immediately. Of course, it could just be compressing things to fit into one panel.
...roll too high = fail? o_O
I think that's pretty much the best way to handle stuff that's required to be known. Give the player whose invested into that tree the information to interpret just by virtue of owning the skill. Just do a hand wave roll so people still think they're being tested.
You can do genuine rolls for things that aren't plot central.
This is exactly why some GMs choose to roll the dice for players behind a screen (although this takes a trusting group)!
I actually prefer that someone else roll for me anyway, I am the worst at rolling dice. And not in a "if you need a low roll, just ask Josh to do it" kind of way. If you want me to roll low, I will roll high. Besides, letting someone else handle all the meta stuff like dice rolling and rules lets me just focus on making the decisions I want my character to make.
When a PC critically fails a roll, I try to play it up in the most humorous way possible. That way, all of the PCs (including the person who flubbed the roll) can laugh about it.
I also tend to reward critical failures with extra XP or some other bonus so the PC doesn't feel so bad at having their character make such a huge mistake. "Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes" and all that. A lot of RPG systems have this reward for mistakes baked into the system itself. For example, Shadowrun 5th gives you an extra point of Edge when you critically glitch, Castle Falkenstein allows the spell to go off immediately when you draw a Joker and invoke Wild Magic (and all of the harmonics associated with Wild Magic), etc.
1. Gabe simply isn't learning the game well (and I refuse to believe he is unable to learn some of the more subtle points of a CCG after over 100 matches), which means the game is way too complicated.
2. The Matchmaking is utter shit.
I suppose it could be a combination of the two, but either way, Hearthstone is clearly not for me.
On a related note, I really don't understand anyone's compulsion to play a game that is so clearly frustrating with so little payoff. That also goes for things like Dark Souls and Super Meat Boy- though those run more along the lines of overcoming arbitrary challenges while being limited by a set of arbitrary rules, instead of mastering and manipulating a set of arbitrary rules better than someone else. I understand wanting to challenge yourself and "see if you can do it", but there's a line, man.
At least now I know I'd hate it without having to waste time finding out for myself.
Stats in our game are numbers from 5 to 20 (or higher if, say, you augment your stats magically). If you need to make a Wisdom check, you have to roll lower than your Wisdom on a d20. That way we can keep the checks simple and still have higher stats meaning better stats. Skill checks are percentages--if your skill is 45%, you have to roll lower than 45 on a d100. Hit and damage rolls are still higher=better, but this system works pretty well for being intuitive and straightforward in a roleplay-based, bare-bones system like ours.
But clowns are just too creepy to have a church devoted to them.
Reading that Hearthstone bit made me want to see what Gabes reaction to having a Turn 2 Pack Rat cast against him.
Gorram Pack Rat.
Believe me when I say I suck at Hearthstone. It's not my kind of game, though I play it quite a bit. Rather than flail around trying to build powerdecks and being dismantled/schooled by better powerdecks, I tend to theme my decks (I can't put an Amani Berserker in that deck! Why would Anduin have a troll fighting for him?).
With this in mind, I don't think Hearthstone is too complicated. I haven't really had problems with the matchmaking either. Yeah, I lose a lot, but I do win sometimes, and while for my sanity's sake I don't keep track, I have to imagine I've got a better K/D than he describes. I'm not sure if the matchmaking may be different on iPad (weird, but entirely possible). Or perhaps the losses are just standing out more to him. I know I, as a low skill player, tend to care a lot less about losing (at Hearthstone, Dota2, or whatever) than my mid-skill friends.
I can't speak for Gabe's experience, but I'd urge you to give Hearthstone a try. I don't think you'll find the matchmaking or the complication level to be as bad as you think.
Matchmaking and ranked games seemed intimidating, but they tend to put you where you need to be to have an engaging time.
this reminds me of a time when our group was playing Call of Cthulhu and I figured out that certain monsters were flammable and that I could throw flammable things at them
so I rolled to throw an oil lamp at one and totally whiffed, because my character was an eccentric spinster crazy cat lady librarian with virtually nothing in str. whoops.jpg
in the comic:
I assumed she was talking about him rolling a check, but I also just absorbed the action as something that happened during the cadence of the dialogue, since his entire body is out of frame, so, eh.
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
I'm so bummed that they took ranked play (League Play) out of Call of Duty: Ghosts. It was one of the best features of Black Ops 2.
I love that "baby torture" and "clowns" rank similarly in @ceres hierarchy of evil churches.
I totally crit a teammate in the back once. My only crit in that entire campaign.
But even casual players (like myself) appreciate being able matched up with similarly-skilled opponents. No one likes losing, but losing because you're horribly outmatched is definitely worse. And on the flip side, losing after a long, hard-fought battle is frustrating in its own way, but you can at least console yourself with the idea that improving your skill will actually mean something.
And keep in mind, I'm not just speaking about Hearthstone- it's just the example at hand.
I would think a better solution would have been to not have "casual" and "ranked". You simply go in and play, and the matchmaking system does what it's supposed to do. And since matches are played one hand at a time, with (I assume) no inherent pressure to keep playing, does that not make sense?
The Ranked play is actually pretty awesome and forgiving since it's pretty easy to recover points and while you start at Rank 25, you can't lose Ranking until you go past Rank 20.
You should play more Trail of Cthulhu! A very nice Cthulhu game partially designed with this problem in mind.